Rivals Keep Swinging

All Eyes On Va.

The race for Virginia's highest office has been a $25 million brawl, judged too negative by most voters and followed by newspapers, magazines and television cameras from across the nation.

Tuesday's outcome may turn on an issue that two months ago most people thought politically inconsequential - abortion.

And the most expensive political campaign in Virginia history will end in one of two memorable ways:

* With the first black elected governor in the United States;

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Tuesday, November 7, 1989. An article incorrectly stated that the gubernatorial candidates had spent $24.5 million thus far in the campaign. Based on reports filed Oct. 30, the candidates have spent $22.2 million. The story also incorrectly stated that the polls open today at 7 a.m. The polls open at 6 a.m.

* With another comeback win for a candidate who's been counted out twice before.

On Saturday, Republican nominee J. Marshall Coleman was hopping around the state, appearing with another in a string of prominent national Republicans and making several stops in vote-rich Northern Virginia.

Democrat L. Douglas Wilder was making a traditional sweep through the mountains and hollows of Southwest Virginia, an impoverished, strike-torn area that he has visited often in the campaign.

After months of campaigning - years, actually - it will be up to the voters when the polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m. "It's all just hay unless you get out your voters," one Wilder aide said.

Trailing by 4 to 11 percentage points depending on which poll you use, Coleman is looking to pull off what President Bush, campaigning for the Republican ticket in Richmond and Norfolk Friday, called "the greatest comeback of the year."

Defeated for governor in 1981, Coleman was even refused his party's nomination for lieutenant governor in 1985.

Considered a long shot when he began this gubernatorial bid more than two years ago, he went on to win a bruising primary contest against three other Republicans this spring.

Starting the primary campaign 30 points down in political polls to the front-runner, former U.S. Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr., Coleman closed that gap with a relentless attack on Trible, including a barrage of negative television ads.

While the Republicans fought each other in the primary, Democrat Wilder was emerging unchallenged for his party's nomination. After 16 years in the state Senate, he won a low-budget battle four years ago to become lieutenant governor and the first black elected to statewide office in modern times. He was unopposed for the gubernatorial nomination.

Wilder portrayed himself as the logical heir to the past two Democratic administrations, although he has clashed with both.

He paraded Gov. Gerald L. Baliles and Baliles' predecessor in the Governor's Mansion, U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb, to show party faithful that they were supporting him despite past feuds.

In the weeks after the primary, Coleman got a good jump out of the starting blocks. Contributions rolled in, rebuilding a bankroll depleted in the primary. Polls showed Wilder and Coleman running neck and neck.

Wilder was stalled at the start by accusations and press disclosures. Newspapers reported that he had held an interest in a run-down Richmond house which he supposedly sold after the 1985 election, and had not reported minor real estate and bank stock holdings on his state conflict-of-interest forms.

Those complicated and disputed charges faded when attention turned to the emotional issue that unexpectedly dominated the campaign - abortion.

For years, politicians gained a few "pro-life" votes by championing the anti-abortion cause, without risking support among voters who favored existing laws allowing abortion. Those voters were not threatened by anti-abortion candidates because their position was protected by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. "Pro-choice" voters cast their votes for reasons other than a candidate's stand on abortion.

During the Republican primary, Coleman appealed to the right wing of his party with a tough stand against abortion, opposing abortion in all cases except when the mother's life is threatened by the pregnancy.

Then in July came the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the way for states to impose more restrictions on abortion. The political equation had changed. Voters who opposed new limits on abortion had something to be concerned about.

Wilder faltered, then staked out an abortion rights position, saying he would generally support the current law.

Wilder says he and his maverick political consultant, Paul Goldman, had decided to frame the abortion issue in a television ad as a matter of personal liberty - government should not encroach on a person's life.

Wilder's media consultant wanted to hold off on running that ad, saving it for later in the campaign. But Wilder went with it early, in September.

Wilder began to climb in the polls, turning what had been a six-point deficit in Mason-Dixon Opinion Research Inc.'s September poll into a two-point lead in Mason-Dixon's October poll and a four-point lead in the same firm's poll released last week.

"Wilder has kept him on the defensive about abortion for the entire campaign," Robert D. Holsworth, associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, told Knight-Ridder Newspapers.